Ken Forkish: An interview with the man behind the bread

He runs two of Portland's most acclaimed eateries (Ken's Artisan Bakery, and Ken's Artisan Pizza -- where lines out the door are still routine nearly seven years in). His gold-standard breads grace the tables of many of the city's best restaurants. His celebrated cookbook, "Flour Water Salt Yeast," published last fall is currently in its fourth printing. With all that, you'd think Ken Forkish would be planning his retirement in the Cote d'Azur right about now.

Instead, this Silicon-Valley-software-engineer-turned-Portland-bread-baron is embarking on his third, most ambitious and most personal project this summer -- a baking atelier and "elevated tavern" dubbed Trifecta. We sat down with Forkish and talked about his plans for Trifecta, the simple luxury of an exceptional cheese toast, and why his very best pastry is the one right out of the oven.

How did you grow up eating? What's your most vivid childhood comfort food memory?My mom's chocolate cake. She'd make it for a birthday or special occasion, not very often. It would sit on the cake stand, and you couldn't walk by without evening up the last cut, and before long there wasn't anything to even up.

What is your quintessential go to comfort food now? A cheese toast. When the bread is good and the cheese is good, it's absolutely my go-to comfort food. I like simple foods.

Made with your own bread, of course.Yes. I'd use the Country Brown, and a farmstead cheddar from Steve Jones' Cheese Bar.

As life milestones go, people get nostalgic about the memory of their first kiss or car--do you remember your first loaf of really great bread? Same euphoric feeling or better?I'd rather not talk about my first kiss, because I remember dribbling down my chin.

Ok, how about the bread then?I grew up in suburban Maryland in the 1960s and 1970s, and we didn't know good bread. We grew up eating the equivalent of Wonder Bread. During a trip to France, in the mid-'90s, was the first time I ever ate Pain Poilane. I had already read about him (boulanger Lionel Poilane), and I remember reading that there was a wine-like complexity to his bread, and I thought, I can't wait to experience this. It was my light-bulb moment. So I stood in line on rue du Cherche-Midi, and the first really memorable bread I had was his, in Paris. He was my muse.

Of all your creations, what do you find the most comforting? What are you pulling from the case on the coldest, dreariest Portland morning?Well, it's not even making it to the case, actually. It'll be something that's still hot from the oven. We stagger our bake in the mornings, so that there's always something available that has heat from the oven in it, at least up until 11, 11:30 a.m. So for me, it's not a particular item, it's what's hot from the oven. It might be a ham and cheese croissant, that's super comforting, it's so good when the cheese is still oozing. Or it might be a chocolate croissant.

You're a trim guy, do you have a self-imposed pastries per diem limit?I really love what we make here, and I eat when I'm here and taste when I'm here, I do eat our bread every day, but I generally don't take pastry home. Sometimes I'll bring a bag of our chocolate hazelnut cookies home and have one or two.

Do you bake much at home?I do. But only bread, I don't bake pastry at home, because I'd eat it. I started baking bread at home for my book, and I got into the rhythm, and I enjoy it. Sometimes I'll bake a few times a week, then I'll go months without.

If you could go anywhere for the perfect croissant, where would it be?Paris, where else would you go?!

What are your comfort food fixes here in Portland?Bunk's meatball hero. The pastas at Ciao Vito -- any one of them.

This summer, you're embarking on a big new venture. How'd that happen? Has Trifecta always been part of the plan?No, I'm just figuring this out as I go. You know how Harrison Ford, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when someone asks him what the plan is, says "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go." It's like that. With Trifecta, it's like, what else would I do? I've got the bakery running super well, I could play a lot of golf, I could travel more, I could read books, I could do the things we all wish we could, but I'm not done yet as a creative professional. Anybody in a creative career knows that you don't want to get to a point where you just have to stop. I'm not finished. So Trifecta is going to be my atelier, which is French for workshop, a place to further my craft as a baker, where I won't be pinned down. It will be the same with the restaurant menu. I don't want it to be defined. It's the kind of restaurant I've been wanting to do for years. I think of it as a tavern, elevated tavern food really--if you were to mishmash the DNA of Chez Panisse's cafe, Animal, and Joe Beef, that's kind of what you'd have. A lot of people want to build the place they want to hang out in, and that is definitely true in this case.